Titus 1:16

θεὸν ὁμολογοῦσιν εἰδέναι : “ We know God ”; that was their profession of faith. They “gloried in God,” Romans 2:17. This is an allusion to the Jewish pride of religious privilege. Weiss points out that this phrase alone is sufficient to prove that the heretics in question are not the Gnostics of the second century (Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 133). See the use of the phrase in Galatians 4:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:5. Compare 2 Timothy 3:5, “Holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof”; also 1 John 2:4. There is here the constant antithesis between words and deeds.

τοῖς δὲ ἔργοις ἀρνοῦνται : Their lives give the lie to their professions; “They acted as if this Supreme Being was a mere metaphysical abstraction, out of all moral relation to human life, as if He were neither Saviour nor Judge” (J. H. Bernard comm. in loc.).

πρὸς πᾶν ἔργον ἀγαθόν : See note on 2 Timothy 3:17.

ἀδόκιμοι : worthless, unfit. See note on 2 Timothy 3:8.